Trigger Warning for descriptions of sexual violence and abuses against sex workers

Last week, Jordan Flaherty wrote an article at Colorlines about how sex workers are being punished under an archaic and punitive law that specifically targets those who are convicted of selling oral or anal sex (as opposed to vaginal sex). The law makes these sex workers open to being labeled as felons by police and prosecutors, and worst of all, forces them to register as sex offenders.

Last month, a coalition of advocates, including Women With A Vision and the Center for Constitutional Rights, filed a federal lawsuit challenging the statue:

Eve, who asked that we not reveal her real name or age, spent two years in prison. During her time behind bars she was raped and contracted HIV. Upon release, she was forced to register in the state’s sex offender database. The words “sex offender” now appear on her driver’s license. “I have tried desperately to change my life,” she says, but her status as a sex offender stands in the way of housing and other programs. “When I present my ID for anything,” she says, “the assumption is that you’re a child molester or a rapist. The discrimination is just ongoing and ongoing.”

Eve was penalized under Louisiana’s 205-year-old Crime Against Nature statute, a blatantly discriminatory law that legislators have maneuvered to keep on the state’s books for the purpose of turning sex workers into felons. As enforced, the law specifically singles out oral and anal sex for greater punishment for those arrested for prostitution, including requiring those convicted to register as sex offenders in a public database. Advocates say the law has further isolated poor women of color in particular, including those who are forced to trade sex for food or a place to sleep at night.

In 2003, the Supreme Court outlawed sodomy laws with its decision in Lawrence v. Texas. That ruling should have invalidated Louisiana’s law entirely. Instead, the state has chosen to only enforce the portion of the law that concerns “solicitation” of a crime against nature. The decision on whether to charge accused sex workers with a felony instead of Louisiana’s misdemeanor prostitution law is left entirely in the hands of police and prosecutors.

Prior to the lawsuit, Colorlines was covering the issue over a year ago. Melissa Gira Grant wrote about the suit at Third Wave right after it was filed last month, and the INCITE! Blog was on it both last year and earlier this month. You should definitely go check those articles out, as there’s no doubt that I’m behind. But I still think the issue is worth writing about and getting further attention.

As noted by Flaherty, Louisiana is the only U.S. state that requires people who have been convicted of crimes that do not involve minors or violence outside the sexual violence itself to register as sex offenders. Meghan’s Law, which created sex offender registries, was clearly intended to target rapists. Louisiana has actively made the choice to abuse the registry to further shame, punish, and vilify sex workers who have not committed any violence. Women are by far the primary target of these efforts, though gay and bisexual men are also incredibly vulnerable. Of the women targeted by the state, women who are non-white, trans, and/or poor are most open to attack.

People convicted under the Louisiana law must carry a state ID with the words “sex offender” printed below their name. If they have to evacuate because of a hurricane, they must stay in a special shelter for sex offenders that has no separate facilities for men and women. They have to pay a $60 annual registration fee, in addition to $250 to $750 to print and mail postcards to their neighbors every time they move. The post cards must show their names and addresses, and often they are required to include a photo. Failing to register and pay the fees, a separate crime, can carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison.

Women and men on the registry will also find their names, addresses, and convictions printed in the newspaper and published in an online sex offender database. The same information is also displayed at public sites like schools and community centers. Women—including one mother of three—have complained that because of their appearance on the registry, they have had men come to their homes demanding sex. A plaintiff in the suit had rocks thrown at her by neighbors. “This has forced me to live in poverty, be on food stamps and welfare,” explains a man who was on the list. “I’ve never done that before.”

In Orleans Parish, 292 people are on the registry for selling sex, versus 85 people convicted of forcible rape and 78 convicted of “indecent behavior with juveniles.” Almost 40 percent of those registered in Orleans Parish are there solely because they were accused of offering anal or oral sex for money. Seventy-five percent of those on the database for Crime Against Nature are women, and 80 percent are African American. Evidence gathered by advocates suggests a majority are poor or indigent.

There are several broad critiques to be made of sex offender registry programs. In addition to the racial profiling and discriminatory enforcement noted in the Colorlines article, there are also further questions regarding whether sex offender registries actually keep communities safer and/or lower recidivism rates. Support for sex offender registry programs generally, however, should not be viewed as in any way incompatible with thinking that the Louisiana system is being used as a means of violence and oppression against sex workers and must immediately be overturned.

This is not in any way about keeping communities safer. It is about further punishing and portraying as deviant those who have failed to comply with societal rules regarding sexuality, class, and womanhood. It’s not about making communities safer, it’s about specifically ensuring that these particular community members are as unsafe as possible. And in that sense, it’s certainly working.

Because of the way that sex workers are generally made vulnerable to violence, as well as the ways that prisoners face frequent sexual assault, the most callous part of this practice may be the fact that such large numbers of those forced to register as sex offenders for non-violent offenses are victims of sexual violence themselves. Most of the women and men profiled in these articles talk about having been raped, whether as adults or children, whether by clients or family members, by prison guards or fellow prisoners. They must register as sex offenders, be unable to find employment or residences, face harassment and assault, and bear scarlet letters on their identification while at the same time, probably all of their actual rapists do not have to do the same. They have not only been raped, but been given their rapists’ punishments. They have not only been raped, but told that they are like, or perhaps worse than, their actual rapists.

And while this form of punishment for an act that should not be illegal in the first place is not even remotely acceptable for those who do engage in sex work because it is their preferred profession, it is also worth noting that there are many sex workers who do sex work as a form of survival or have otherwise been coerced. These workers are already more likely to be in street-based economies, and therefore are more likely to be targeted by law enforcement and more likely to be singled out for felony instead of misdemeanor punishment as a result of judicial prejudice.

In other words, punishing people for what they choose to do with their own bodies, when those actions do not harm any other person, is unconscionable — as is punishing them specifically for selling forms of sex perceived as less acceptable by a cissexist, heterosexist, anti-sex society. But quite a few of those women and men who have been forced to register as sex offenders didn’t even necessarily have a choice. And for that, they have been branded by a racist, anti-trans, classist, anti-gay system.

It will be interesting to see how this case plays out, and whether the court will decide with power and oppression as usual, or with the people and justice.

Arizona legislators are working on a new anti-immigration bill that is essentially the hospital equivalent of their notorious SB 1070. The new bill, SB 1405, would require all hospitals within the state to verify the immigration status of all patients. If a patient cannot prove that sie is in the country legally, hospital staff would be required by law to contact immigration officials.

A new bill making its way through Arizona’s state legislature is drawing a lot of attention. It’s Senate Bill 1405. Some call it the hospital version of SB 1070.

Anyone who has spent a day at Maricopa County Medical Center knows people from all walks of life are wheeled through the halls.

But if a new piece of legislation passes, some of those patients will be wheeled from the emergency room to immigration officials.

If SB 1405 passes, hospitals would be required to check a patient’s citizenship status after administering any emergency medical care.

If the person isn’t in the United States legally, the law would require they be turned over to immigration officials.

Yes, this bill is real. It can be read in full on the Arizona State Legislature’s website, and view the official fact sheet.

Now, the bill itself does not actually require that hospitals refuse treatment to those who are undocumented or cannot prove immigration status. SB 1405 doesn’t go quite that far — at least, in this draft.

But do not be at all mistaken — if passed, an inability to access medical care will be precisely what occurs all the same.

Already, some immigrants, terrified and terrorized by the very real raids and surveillances that are a daily threat to their communities, falsely believe that hospitals are required to check immigration status. As a result, they avoid medical treatment, even when it is dire. People have become very ill, risked their lives, been left with lifelong conditions that would have been treatable earlier, and undoubtedly died. Because there is a war to protect U.S. borders, and undocumented bodies have inevitably been declared its enemy.

If this bill is passed — and with the passage of SB 1070, it is most certainly more than a remote possibility — that situation will be multiplied many times over. People will forced to choose between the dangerousness of refusing medical care and hoping they survive and the dangerousness of interacting with institutions have declared their existence, their very selves to be “illegal.” As now with those who can’t afford care in the U.S. for-profit medical system, serious conditions will be nervously brushed off. Rape victims, victims of intimate partner violence, and women and trans* people who are having pregnancy complications will go without treatment. There will be no such thing as safety. Violence will become even more inescapable than it is now. And people will die.

People will die.

They will die, and this fact — this is not speculation, it is a simple cause and effect analysis, it is a fact — is neither a secret nor a mystery. And clearly, that’s at least part of the point. As KPHO Phoenix reports:

Those in favor of the bill said hospitals shouldn’t be treating people in the country illegally.

They don’t quote a proponent of the bill in support of this statement, but such people are not exactly difficult to find. They are everywhere, asking why should “they” (undocumented immigrants) get to use “our” (U.S.) schools, anyway? Clearly, children whose parents don’t have the right papers do not deserve an education, they do not need to read or add or write. They are seen asking why “they” should be allowed to use “our” police forces. Clearly, some of us deserve access to the institutions generally regarded as the primary means to keep communities safe, some of us deserve to report crimes against us, to not be assaulted and raped, and some of us do not. And they are indeed seen asking why “they” should be allowed to use “our” hospitals — there is a health care crisis already, so how dare they use up resources?

Clearly, some of us deserve to live and some of us deserve to die. Because that is what the ability to access health care comes down to. And those supporting this bill know it.

And then there is this:

Senate President Russell Pearce, a Mesa Republican who was chief sponsor of last year’s immigration law, says the hospitals bill is part of a broader effort to crack down on illegal immigration. The hospitals bill wouldn’t bar people from getting care, but it would put the onus on hospitals to “do due diligence,” Pearce said. “We’re going to enforce our laws without apology.”

Added Pearce: “It’s the law. It’s a felony to (aid and) abet. We’re going to enforce the law without apology.”

This is what happens when we declare people “illegal,” when we start calling them by that slur publicly and officially. If they are illegal, their very lives are illegal. To protect the health and safety of those declared illegal, to afford them the very most basic human rights, to treat them as human beings, becomes a crime.

As ms. radically hott off writes:

How much more savage and vindictive can we be? what other mami will have to choose between the health of her children and a place to live/work? Do you know what that feels like? To see your sick child and know—I’m going to have to take her in? To *dread* getting help for your child? I feel like that all the time because of money—I can’t even imagine the added burden of knowing that you will lose everything because your child has a right to live and be healthy.

Those proposing and supporting this bill don’t even recognize that this right to live and be healthy exists for certain bodies, including those which belong to children. They certainly don’t mind putting it in extraordinary jeopardy.

The bill was originally scheduled to go before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, but was yanked at the last moment due to a lack of votes. The sponsors, however, have stated that they are considering other committees. We have most certainly not seen the last of SB 1405, and with numerous other states considering legislation similar to SB 1070, we are witnessing the mere beginning of a white supremacist resurgence in the U.S. In the general public consciousness, the bars for what constitutes either “extreme” or “racist” have both been raised. Progressives can only ignore efforts like these and assume they will just go away at the risk of people losing not only their homes and incomes and right to be near their families, but also their lives.

Trigger Warning for sexual violence and rape apologism

A couple weeks ago in Idaho, a judge dismissed a rape case in which a woman was allegedly raped by a man who she believed at the time to be her boyfriend. The article itself contains a graphic description of the charges themselves (Trigger Warning), but what is of interest to me for the purposes of this post is the reason for the dismissal. The reason was that this was a case of rape by fraud — but the law only recognizes rape by fraud if the woman thought the rapist was her husband.

Fourth District Judge Cheri Copsey said Wednesday she was not happy to dismiss rape charges against two Boise men who police say tricked an intoxicated woman into thinking she was having sex with her boyfriend.

But Copsey said Idaho law left her no choice because the woman wasn’t married.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think it falls within the definition of rape, as defined under Idaho law,” Copsey said as she dismissed a grand jury indictment for charges of rape and aiding and abetting a rape filed against Cielo Sanchez and Zachary McGraw.

Subsection 6 of the Idaho rape code specifies that the crime can be charged when the victim “submits under the belief that the person committing the act is her husband, and the belief is induced by artifice, pretense or concealment practiced by the accused, with intent to induce such belief.”

The key word is “husband,” Copsey said.

She said she suspected that if she allowed the case to go to trial, she would have had to dismiss the case when prosecutors were done.

“What bothers me is the fact is the Legislature realized that someone could be fraudulently induced, and that could be rape, and yet has never chosen to expand protection (the law) gives to married women,” Copsey said. “Unfortunately, the Legislature has never amended (the rape law) to make it to meet the requirements of modern society.”

Initially, it seems a little bit difficult to fathom what exactly was running through the minds of legislators when they crafted a law stating that rape by fraud is a crime, but only when it has been committed against a woman who thought the assailant was her husband. I, of course, do not actually know what was running through their minds. As it seems to address a rather specific set of circumstances, the legislation very well may have been a response to an individual event. But without knowing the exact reasoning behind the wording of the law, I immediately recognize two of its rather repulsive implications.

The first is the suggestion of women as the property of their husbands. Not that long ago, and in many quarters still to this day, rape against a woman was not understood to be a violation of her rights — as women had no right to bodily autonomy — but a property violation against the woman’s father or husband. The woman was not her own private citizen with her own private rights, but an extension of a man; to violate her was to violate the man she was connected to, by defiling a piece of property that largely held its value in sexual purity. Here, the tying of the violation of rape by fraud to the victim’s marital status quite easily conjures up this recent history of women as property. The specific reference to the victim’s husband causes one to wonder whether the goal of the law was not to protect women against rape, but to protect men against the attempts of others to gain access to their wives through the use of fraud.

The second implication is that women who consent to sex with one person cannot be raped by anyone else. The legislation more or less states outright that only married women can be raped by fraud. Because of the specific nature of rape by fraud — that a person thinks sie is consenting to sex with one person, only to find out that the person actually touching hir is another person entirely — this statement very clearly suggests that only married women should be agreeing to any kind of sexual contact at all, and only with their husbands. The implication, therefore, is that any unmarried woman who consents to sex with any man has consented to sex with them all. Because of her supposed “promiscuity,” as evidenced by her willingness to have sex outside of marriage at all, she cannot be raped. Indeed, the law just told the victim in this case that according to the state of Idaho, she was not raped.

It doesn’t particularly matter to me whether or not these implications were intentional. Wider context matters, and if whoever wrote this law didn’t consider the implications when doing so, that’s on them. Their intentions don’t make the implications exist any less. Not intending to treat women as the property of their husbands doesn’t make the effect any less real in a world where women have suffered and continue to suffer extraordinary abuses, including sexual violence, precisely because of that belief. Not intending to say that women who have sex outside of marriage are unrapeable doesn’t make the effect any less real when a woman who was raped has been told that because of her marital status, her rape doesn’t count. And that’s not even to touch on how the gendered nature of the legislation suggests that only women are raped, and that only men commit rape, leaving many potential victims without any recourse.

The good news is that in addition to harsh criticism of the law by the judge who dismissed the charges, a legislator or two may be up in arms as well. While I commend legislators who are looking into changing the law so that it applies to more than just married women, I have to note that a band-aid probably isn’t good enough. As stated above, it is indeed entirely possible that the original law, which has proven so grossly inadequate now, was written in response to a specific instance just like this one. That means that “insert[ing] another sentence” just doesn’t cut it. Changing the law to address unmarried victims — and I hope it goes without stating that at the very least, if the law is to be changed so narrowly, it should at least be changed in a way that is gender neutral with regards to both victims and perpetrators — doesn’t address the wider context of rape laws that don’t adequately define consent and a lack thereof.

McGraw’s defense attorney L. Craig Atkinson later filed a motion to dismiss the charges because they did not fit Idaho’s rape statute.

Sanchez’s attorney, an Ada County public defender, joined McGraw’s motion.

First, there was no allegation the rape was done by force or that the woman was unconscious at the time.

In his motion, Atkinson argued that reports indicate the woman was able to give consent for sex that night, and did.

Atkinson argued that Idaho code does not define alcohol intoxication as “temporary unsoundness of mind,” which is a strict mental health condition that could make a victim incapable of giving consent.

He also argued that the subsection of a law that says a victim can’t give consent for sex because she is “unable to resist due to any intoxicating, narcotic, or anaesthetic substance” did not apply to this case either.

“There are no allegations in this case that the victim was unable to resist due to intoxication,” Atkinson wrote in the motion. “The allegations are the (woman) consented to intercourse, but terminated the intercourse after realizing the individual she was having sex with was not her boyfriend.”

The problem, of course, is that the victim consented to intercourse with only one person. Each time every one of us consents to any given sex act, we understand that we are not consenting to that sex act with every single person in the entire world — only our partner(s) at the time. There is no such thing to blanket consent, in the sense that consenting to a sex act one time means consenting to it at all times. It doesn’t. Similarly, consenting to a sex act with one person does not mean consenting to a sex act with all people. Consent is always highly conditional, and based on the conditions set forth. The conditions set forth here were that the alleged victim consented to intercourse with her boyfriend, and not with anyone else.

And if Idaho law recognized that, not only would Atkinson’s argument be irrelevant, but so would the basis for the judge’s dismissal. A rape law which adequately defines what “consent” means would render any specific law about “rape through fraud” obsolete. Such a law would not be necessary, because it would be understood that fraud negates consent, and that the primary conditions present in any sexual consent — what acts and which individuals the consent applies to — were violated. And this fix would affect a much wider variety of cases and negate the current need to predict all kinds of unusual scenarios.

The problem here is not that one specific part of the rape code only applies to married victims, abominable as that may be. It’s that Idaho’s rape statutes are all around inadequate, and don’t account for the many varied forms that sexual violence takes — which includes a whole lot more than force.

Trigger Warning for discussions of sexual violence within a medical context.

Earlier this year, I wrote about part of a Chicago Tribune series that exposed how Illinois doctors can pretty easily sexually assault patients and get away with it with few to no negative consequences for their violations, frequently even being allowed to keep their licenses to practice medicine. The topic has come up again, as the series has thankfully inspired legislators to finally take some action. As a recap, here’s what the Tribune found:

•Under Illinois law, a sex-crime conviction does not trigger an automatic or permanent revocation of a doctor’s license. In some cases, such doctors lost their license for several years. One doctor convicted of sexual abuse of a patient was never disciplined by state regulators in any way.

•Because sex crimes can be difficult to prosecute, doctors are sometimes convicted of misdemeanor battery. Regulators place these doctors, as well as physicians found guilty of sexual misconduct without a criminal conviction, on an overburdened professional probation program that does little to prevent them from reoffending.

•Law enforcement officials and state regulators are not required to inform each other of patient complaints against doctors. It often takes multiple allegations before they take action.

•This year, Illinois stopped providing the public with detailed histories of the state’s doctors, including whether the doctor was convicted of a crime, fired by a hospital or forced to make a medical malpractice payment within the last five years. The state’s medical lobby has fiercely opposed these profiles.

Why, exactly, a sex crime conviction does not trigger an automatic revocation of one’s medial license, let alone a permanent one, is not at all clear. Nor is it clear why Illinois decided to put the medical lobby’s personal preferences above patient safety — though I do have exactly one educated guess, and it starts with “m” and ends with “oney.” Clearly, real reform is going to take the political will to stand up to check-waving lobbyists in favor of relatively poor health care consumers, and sadly such will is far from a given.

Here’s what state legislators have come up with so far:

State legislators, Gov. Pat Quinn and Attorney General Lisa Madigan agree that change is necessary, but they are not yet certain what shape reforms should take.

State Rep. Mary Flowers, D-Chicago, with the support of House Speaker Michael Madigan, plans to call a bill on Tuesday that would resurrect public access to the physician profiles.

State Sen. Kirk Dillard, R-Hinsdale, said he plans to strengthen legislation that he recently introduced. It would make health care workers whose licenses are revoked because of sex-crime convictions unable to reapply for the license for at least five years, but it does not require that the license be revoked in the first place.

State Rep. Jack Franks, D-Marengo, has introduced legislation that would mandate revocation in the cases of doctors convicted of sexual assault or battery of a patient, and not just those involving felonies.

Lisa Madigan’s office, meanwhile, is crafting legislation that would require law enforcement officials and state regulators to share patient complaints against doctors, while contemplating other possible changes.

Sometimes I feel like I’m living in the Twilight Zone.

It’s not that the ideas presented above are necessarily bad ones. It’s that for the most part, they’re glaringly and woefully inadequate. And it’s astonishing that a combination of pitifully obvious measures that should have been passed years ago and miserably half-assed proposals are what most who have even bothered to try managed to dream up.

Yes, of course state regulators and law enforcement should have to share complaints against doctors. Seeing as how a lack of communication here has allowed perpetrators to go free and patterns to go undetected, this should be a given. But measures should certainly not stop there. And the plan to resurrect public access to physician profiles is a good one, but here’s the thing — patients shouldn’t need to have the education to know they should research whether or not their doctors have been known to previously rape someone, let alone the resources to then do so. They just shouldn’t. No one should have to live in fear that maybe their doctor was once proven to have sexually assaulted a patient; or be aware that their doctor might actually be a rapist, because the law allows rapists to continue being doctors; or have to take the personal initiative to try to protect themselves from predatory doctors, all before they schedule their routine pap smear. Resources are good things, but not when research is left as patients’ only line of defense. Placing sole responsibility in the hands of patients, quite possibly setting up a new “maybe you should have researched your doctor first” form of victim-blaming, is just plain wrong.

But I think that State Sen. Dillard’s proposal, which technically goes further than either of the two listed above, angers me the most. The increased veneer of accountability for perpetrators backed up with actually nothing of the sort sends me into an incoherent rage. While ostensibly increasing the restrictions on medical licenses for sexual offenders, it doesn’t require that the sex offenders automatically have their licenses revoked. Further, not allowing them to reapply for their license until 5 years later is treated as some kind of progress. Is there something magical about 5 years? Something which guarantees that all the desire to violate, humiliate, and assault vulnerable persons has left their psyche? Because to me, it sounds like a completely arbitrary and really, really patronizing number that assumes rapists have the right to continue having access to potential victims while making large salaries and having great deals of social clout to boot.

Here are the facts: no one has the right to practice medicine. No one. And while regulations about who can and cannot access a privilege not generally guaranteed to the public frequently are oppressive, regulations preventing known sexual abusers from having access to the bodies of individuals in private and highly vulnerable situations are not among them.

Of course we wish to reform violent offenders. But one is not guaranteed to have been reformed simply because an arbitrary number of years has passed. Further, when we’re talking about a person in a highly sensitive and authoritative position of physician having committed sexual violence, it seems best for the “one strike and you’re out” rule to apply. The fact is, we restrict actual fundamental rights with far less reason in this country every single day. Take note of the fact that in all but two states, felons are disenfranchised, very often even after they’ve served their time, and even though many felons were convicted on mere drug or property crimes. I hope I don’t have to explain why it is absurd that in the U.S., many people who were caught with too many drugs can’t vote, while some people who were caught raping someone get to keep being doctors. We’re fine violating the constitutional rights of marginalized people, but queasy about revoking the special benefits that generally privileged folks get to enjoy.

That makes State Rep. Franks’ proposal by far the best — especially since it encompasses misdemeanor convictions in addition to felonies — though the Tribune does not note whether or doctors would be able to reapply for their licenses under his proposal after a set date. If they would not, it would certainly be a huge improvement on the status quo, and probably close to the best that can be done at the legislative level.

But I’m incredibly wary of any system that bases revocation of medical licenses on criminal convictions. The fact is that convictions for sexual assault are rather rare in the U.S. criminal justice system. Most victims don’t feel safe reporting their assaults to police, for a wide variety of reasons. Many highly credible cases that are reported are not pursued. Rapists are regularly ruled not guilty by biased juries wallowing in rape apologism and victim-blaming. And which rapists are convicted and which are not tends to fall heavily along lines of race, class, sexual orientation, dis/ability, gender identity, and more, for both the victims and perpetrators. The more marginalized a victim’s identity, the less likely sie is to see hir rapist convicted. The more privileged a perpetrator is, the less likely sie is to ever see repercussions for hir crimes.

We need to stop relying so heavily on our irreparably broken legal system to met out justice. Because right now, it’s barely even doing so at all, and is actually perpetuating a great deal more of injustice. We need to look into alternatives outside the criminal justice system. And to me, one available here seems pretty obvious. Medical boards exist for a reason — to regulate, investigate, punish, and attempt to prevent all types of misconduct. I see no reason, other than lack of political will, why they cannot and should not develop their  own independent systems — not tied to money, or inside politics of who knows and who likes who, or the criminal justice system — specifically for encouraging and taking reports of sexual assault, investigating them, and determining guilt. The standard of evidence can and should be lower than that for criminal trials, and based on a “preponderance of evidence” model from civil courts (rather than a “beyond a reasonable doubt” criminal model). And all found to have committed assault under such a system should have their licenses revoked and not be allowed to reapply.

Would such a system be perfect? No. Do I see lots of ways for it to easily devolve into a mere shell more interested in “saving face” than holding perpetrators accountable? Easily. And that’s why it needs to be designed properly from the start, and from scratch rather than attempting to reform similar systems already in place. Would it be subject to the same kyriarchal biases as the criminal justice system? Quite likely! (And see point two.) But since the current system already has these problems and a whole lot more, I don’t see that as any reason not to, at the very least, start exerting pressure on medical boards to try. What we’re doing isn’t working. And people’s health and very safety is on the line.

The question, of course, is whether we care more about that or the right of abusive doctors to keep raping and otherwise violating patients with impunity. I sadly think I know the answer, but there’s only one way to prove me wrong.

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported on plans in the Venice Beach section of Los Angeles to “crack down” on homeless people who live in R.V.s and vans, parking them either on the street or in beach lots at night.

Every day, Diane Butler and her husband park their two hand-painted R.V.’s in a lot at the edge of Venice Beach here, alongside dozens of other rickety, rusted campers from the 1970s and ’80s. During the day, she sells her artwork on the boardwalk. When the parking lot closes at sunset, she and the other R.V.-dwellers drive a quarter-mile inland to find somewhere on the street to park for the night.

Their nomadic existence might be ending, though. The Venice section of Los Angeles has become the latest California community to enact strict new regulations limiting street parking and banning R.V.’s from beach lots — regulations that could soon force Ms. Butler, 58, to leave the community where she has lived for four decades.

“They’re making it hard for people in vehicles to remain in Venice,” she said.

Southern California, with its forgiving weather, has long been a popular destination for those living in vehicles and other homeless people. And for decades, people living in R.V.’s, vans and cars have settled in Venice, the beachfront Los Angeles community once known as the “Slum by the Sea” and famous for its offbeat, artistic culture.

Yet even as the economic downturn has forced more people out of their homes and into their cars, vehicle-dwellers are facing fewer options, with more communities trying to push them out.

As nearby neighborhoods and municipalities passed laws restricting overnight parking in recent years, Venice became the center of vehicle dwelling in the region. More than 250 vehicles now serve as shelter on Venice streets, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

“The only place between Santa Barbara and San Diego where campers can park seven blocks from the beach is this little piece of land,” said City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, whose district includes Venice. “Over the years, it’s only gotten worse, as every other community along the coast has adopted restrictions.”

And for all of the Venice Beach residents with homes’ allegations of “bad behavior” by those living in vehicles, the issue is really about gentrification and wealthier home owners wanting the neighborhoods they’ve moved into to stop welcoming those members of the community who have been there the longest.

In the past, bohemian Venice was tolerant of vehicle-dwellers, but, increasingly, the proliferation of R.V.’s in this gentrifying neighborhood has prompted efforts to remove them.

“The status quo is unacceptable,” said Mark Ryavec, president of the Venice Stakeholders Association, a group of residents devoted to removing R.V.’s from the area. “It’s time to give us some relief from R.V.’s parking on our doorsteps.”

It’s an issue that’s been going on for some time; the alt text on the header image will reveal that while I was unable to find a legally usable image that was taken for this most recent story, I could find one from a very similar report on Venice Beach in 2004. It’s also an issue that has played out over and over again across the U.S., if not in the form of battles over people living in vehicles, then in the form of battles over homeless people living in tents or using sleeping bags. Anything that makes homeless people more comfortable, safer, and less likely to be exposed to the elements, it seems, is up for scrutiny and fodder for potential legislation.

In response, abby jean writes:

because the best way to deal with homelessness is always to punish or make it more difficult for the actual people who are homeless. do we think if we make homelessness illegal it will cease to exist?

Time and time again, we see evidence of the fact that most people care more about how “unsightly” homeless people in their neighborhoods are than about the fact that said people don’t have homes. That they may be hungry, don’t have a warm, safe place to sleep, or lack access to health care. Those of us who are privileged enough to have homes tend to care more about maintaining the illusion that our cities are happy places that take care of their citizens than addressing the fact that an illusion is exactly what it is.

A big part of this reaction to homelessness is based in the Western, capitalist “bootstrap” myth, that those of us who have economic privilege got there purely through hard work with no luck or social privilege thrown in. The corollary to this belief is that people with homes deserve to have them — and those without homes must have done something to make them undeserving of such a basic right as housing. And when mental illness and addiction are so regularly falsely understood as personal failings, this view becomes all the more pervasive, powerful, and harmful.

Another part is plain old prejudice — the above mentioned biases against people with mental illnesses and/or addiction, for a start, as well as other forms of ableism, classism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. Social oppression often plays a huge part in homelessness, whether we’re talking about queer and trans* youth being kicked out of their homes, someone being unable to find a job after an arrest for doing sex work, or a person with a disability being unable to access benefits and services needed to stay in their home. Stigma against marginalized group and their over-representation in homeless populations also plays a role in the revulsion that middle-class people tend to express towards them. People “like them” — whatever “like them” might mean in a certain context on a certain day — aren’t perceived as quite as human as the rest of us.

And another factor is that really addressing the issue of homelessness just straight up takes work. It means digging deep and making big changes. It means seeing homeless people as deserving of housing that is more than just temporary, not because they’ve done something to “earn” or “deserve” it, but because their being human is just enough. It means making access to health care a right and not a privilege, and that includes access to mental health care and substance abuse treatment programs. It means addressing the causes of domestic violence, the effect that war has on veterans, the impact that hatred has on LGBT people. It means, frankly, rethinking the exalted place that private ownership and property rights hold in our society, when those rights put other human beings out on the street. It means welfare that actually works and gives people enough to live on. It means addressing economic racism. It means talking about the lack of worker’s rights. It means a critical reconsideration and restructuring of how we live and how we treat others, including a lot more than I’ve listed here.

Facing up to the fact that we’ve built a society that actively harms people is a lot tougher than building a couple of shelters or writing up some tickets. Starting to think of human beings as people again after being so used to treating them like cockroaches (unless, of course, there’s a feel-good lesson involved) is a radical shift.

So instead, over and over again, we as a society just keep pushing the people we don’t see as human out. Do we think they’ll cease to exist? No, but if we don’t have to see them, we don’t have to think about them. And for too many people, that’s apparently close enough.

I’m incredibly pleased to be able to pass along some great news for a change — the Tribal Law and Order Act, which I  had previously urged all of you to support, and which the infinitely awesome Pretty Bird Woman House vocally approves, has passed both houses of Congress and it set to be signed by President Obama today.

A measure designed to ease stubbornly high rates of violent crime, including rape and sexual assault, within Indian reservations will be signed into law by President Obama on Thursday.

Advocates of the Tribal Law and Order Act, which took three years to put together and passed the Senate last week, say it will ensure that more crimes, including murders and serious assaults, are reported and prosecuted amid worries that many cases go unpunished.

The measure gives tribal courts tougher sentencing powers and sets stricter rules to gather and collect more data on crimes. Special U.S. prosecutors will be appointed to tackle what advocates of the law describe as an epidemic of violence.

The president is due to sign the bill into law during a ceremony at the White House on Thursday afternoon.

In the U.S., there is currently an epidemic of sexual violence against Native American women — the rate of rape against Native women is 2.5 that of all other women in the U.S., and more than one in three Native American women will be raped in her lifetime. While some perpetrators are indeed Native themselves, a vast majority of the rapists (86%) are non-Natives, usually white men, who have come onto Native land. Until now, such rapists have often been able to rape with impunity, not only because of the socially marginalized social status of their victims (something rapists tend to seek out), reluctance by victims to report, and poor handling of cases by police — all serious problems and facets of this issue on their own — but also because of confusion and loopholes regarding legal jurisdictions for non-Native perpetrators on Native land.

The Tribal Law and Order Act works to correct several of these problems:

Under the new rules, the Justice Department will have to maintain data on the cases it does not pursue to prosecution. It will also have to share with tribal justice officials any evidence in cases not prosecuted.

The act also aims to clear up jurisdictional loopholes that allow some crimes to slip through the net. It will allow selected tribal police officers to enforce federal laws on Indian lands, whether or not the offender is Indian.

The National Congress of American Indians says it hopes the measure will mean that more sexual assaults carried out on the reservations by non-tribal members will be punished.

Tribal courts will be allowed to sentence offenders to up to three years in prison, increased from the current one-year maximum sentence.

All tribal and federal police officers in the reservations will receive extra training to interview sexual-assault victims and collect evidence from crime scenes.

That the new law will not only provide stronger oversight to U.S. federal handling of sexual violence against Native women, but also strengthens the power of tribal officers and justice systems to enforce the law is absolutely vital, for several reasons. Firstly, victims may simply not believe in U.S. models of justice, holding their faith rather in their tribal systems. Secondly, the U.S. justice system has been known, as has been extensively documented on this very blog, to treat rape victims very, very poorly. The more marginalized a victim is, whether on the basis of race, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, class, or other identifier, the worse treatment they are likely to receive. Further, the U.S. government has done more harm and violence to Native peoples than can be easily or adequately expressed. It makes sense that rape victims would not trust the U.S. justice system to fairly and reasonably handle their case, and may trust their own tribal systems to treat them better. It also makes sense that victims would not trust the U.S. government to do any harm to them as Native people, and would better trust their own tribal systems to better respect their rights and humanity.

Most importantly, whatever a victim’s reasons and whatever a victim’s inclinations, it’s my understanding that the law will give them something of a choice regarding how to proceed.

The sad news is that while this should be a bill that absolutely everyone who’s not a rapist can get behind, 92 Republicans actually voted against the bill in the House. Interesting that they chose a vote regarding the physical safety of Native women and their ability to find justice for the violent crimes committed against them to make a “statement” about legislative procedures. At least we know where their priorities lie.

Yesterday, a new domestic violence law went into effect in Alabama. The changes provide greater privacy to victims filing protection orders, and expand the definition of abuse to include a wider range of relationships — namely, dating relationships.

Changes to Alabama’s abuse protection law will now cover more people when it comes to domestic violence.

Before the new changes went into effect Thursday, there must have been a connection by marriage, a child being involved in the relationship, a common-law marriage, or the abuse include a former household member in order to file a protection order.

Now, the law includes people who have been dating for at least six months.

Kelly’s Rainbow Executive Director Carolyn Crump said she thinks the changes are for the better.

“I think [the law] had gotten so broad it was losing its effectiveness,” Crump said. “If we have it down to intimate, partner relationships, I think it can be more effective this way.”

The law also changes the age at which a victim can file a protection order from 19 to 18 and removes the victim’s contact information from court documents to keep the abuser from being able to track the victim down.

I want to celebrate this achievement, I really do. And I do offer my very sincere congratulations to those who worked hard to get the law this far. But apparently I’m feeling a lot less optimistic than I was yesterday, because my most prominent reaction to this news is: That’s it?

For those who will be directly impacted by the law, who will be able to file for protective orders where they weren’t able to before, it is of course an awful lot. But the problem is that it still leaves far too many victims of abuse out in the cold. Specifically, while allowing 18-year-olds to file for protective orders, under the new law minors still have no recourse. And while including dating relationships without cohabitation or children in the law is vital, it’s also way overdue and not nearly enough. After all, the rules includes a restriction stating that a couple must have been dating for at least 6 months before anything can be done.

And what the hell kind of protection is that? It’s well and good for people who have been in a relationship with their abuser for some time, but a victim should never have to keep seeing hir abuser until some arbitrary timing benchmark has been met for hir to have support in getting out of the relationship.

Here are the facts: little instances of abuse start early on. And from there on out, those little instances tend to progress pretty quickly into bigger ones. While hardly universal among abusive relationships, it’s not even remotely unusual for abuse to be occurring six months in. In fact, I’d say that among abusive relationships, it’s incredibly common. And while I honestly have no idea how common it is for someone to try to escape an abusive relationship that early on, it should certainly be the absolute last thing our laws are discouraging. And if someone leaving an abusive relationship early on needs a protective order, they need a fucking protective order. Four months versus six months doesn’t mean a whole lot when it’s your safety on the line.

I see absolutely no reason whatsoever to refuse to allow minors to obtain protective orders, as well as to set the relationship benchmark at a minimum of six months dating. The only “official” reason I can surmise is a bogus concern that people will abuse the law with situations that don’t actually require protective orders. But I say that in the highly unusual situation that someone is seeking a protective order after seeing someone for only a week, some really terrifying things are probably going on. To suggest otherwise is to fall back on the old “bitches lie” meme that says intimate partner violence victims are inherently untrustworthy. It’s to give into the fear that poor innocent men will be punished (by not being allowed to contact someone they apparently don’t even want to contact?). It’s to perpetuate the abhorrent, punitive notion that even if a couple assholes were wasting everyone’s time with petty, non-abusive disagreements, keeping them out of the system is more important than letting in people who desperately and legitimately need help.

Which means that the only real reason for these restrictions is to police what really counts as a relationship, and what really counts as violence. It’s about the state having further control over deciding which romantic and intimate partnerships are valid and legitimate. It’s about the state having control over whether it really matters that you’re receiving harassing phone calls, being hit, and/or being raped. It’s definitely not about protecting victims or the community — in fact, it only serves to take away what little power victims have left.

Through all of this outrage at Alabama, though, I thought it might be a good idea to find out if their new law is really so abnormal. What if Alabama is just putting itself in line with what other states are already doing? To at least a certain extent, it sadly looks like they are.

According to the Breaking the Cycle 2010 State Dating Violence Law Report Card (pdf), until this new law was passed, Alabama was among 8 states¹ that did not allow victims in dating relationships to file protective orders. They don’t, however, explain how other states define a dating relationship, and whether they also include dating length requirements². Further, only nine states and the District of Columbia allow minors to file protective orders on their own behalf, and nine states — including Alabama, and seemingly still so — don’t allow minors to file protective orders at all.

Even more really disturbing details from the report below:

Access
Minors have access to protection orders (eligibility as a minor and/or in a dating relationship) in forty-five states and the District of Columbia. Missouri is the only state that explicitly prohibits minors from accessing protection orders, although a person is considered an adult at age. Four states, North Dakota, South Dakota, Ohio and Wyoming do not specify whether minors are able to access protection orders.

Minors’ Ability to Petition
Although minors may have access to protection orders, state laws vary as to whether minors can petition for orders on their own behalf. Only nine states and the District of Columbia explicitly allow minors to petition on their own behalf: California, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah and Washington. While most states do not specify whether minors can petition for protection orders on their own behalf, nine states prohibit all minors from petitioning: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New Jersey, Texas and Wisconsin.

Protection Orders against Minor Abusers
Fifteen states allow petitions for protection orders to be filed against minor abusers. While a majority of states do not specify whether protection orders are available against minor abusers, five states prohibit protection orders against minors: Maryland11, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey and Oregon.

Restrictions for Same-Sex Relationships
Montana, North Carolina and South Carolina specifically offer protection only to individuals in opposite-sex relationships. Louisiana law specifies that to qualify for a domestic violence protection order as a cohabitant, the victim must be living with an abuser of the opposite sex. In Idaho, the text of the civil domestic violence law does not exclude same-sex couples; however, when the law was adopted, the Idaho Legislature stated that the law was intended to exclude same-sex couples.

In other words, Alabama’s new law only just puts their rules up to the general U.S. standard on some issues, and leaves them below that standard on others. Further, while the old law was abhorrent and this one remains painfully inadequate, they’re frighteningly really not so far behind as you might expect.

Of course, it’s also important to note in all of this that while ensuring that victims can simply obtain a protection order is important, the strategy is limited. Protection and restraining orders are notoriously difficult to enforce effectively. To what extent they can be enforced, police too frequently ignore violations and courts too frequently refuse to act. Among those who are likely to have protection orders go unenforced, some are particularly vulnerable, including but not limited to women of color (unless enforcement is seen as an excuse to lock up another man of color), low-income victims, trans* folks, and people experiencing abuse in same-sex relationships (if they can obtain protective orders at all). Not to mention that for far too many, having technical access to assistance from law enforcement doesn’t make contact with law enforcement safe.

Which is all to say the usual. A small victory has been won. The safety of some people has been disregarded and/or sacrificed in order to get there. And so, so much more is still desperately needed.

h/t @abyss2hope

As reports of untested rape kits across the U.S. just keep on rolling in, Illinois has passed a law mandating that every rape kit be tested.

Facing criticism that physical evidence from sexual assault cases in Illinois often went unanalyzed, Gov. Patrick J. Quinn this week signed a law requiring the police to test all rape kits. State officials and victims’ advocates said it is the first such law in the nation.

Over the past year, critics had exposed a backlog of thousands of untested rape kits in Illinois, and officials said the law would send an important message.

“As a direct result of this law, we will increase the number of arrests and prosecutions of sex offenders and get them out of our communities and into prison,” said Lisa Madigan, the state’s attorney general.

On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch released a report showing that since 1995, only about 20 percent of rape kits, which contain physical evidence obtained from victims, could be confirmed as having been tested in Illinois. More than 4,000 kits had gone untested, the report found.

…

Under the Illinois law, local authorities must submit evidence collected from a sexual assault criminal investigation to the state crime laboratory within 10 business days. The evidence must be tested within six months “if sufficient staffing and resources are available,” according to the law.

As the article goes on to note, that’s quite the mighty loophole. It’s going to require that advocates stay on top of the issue and force the government to make sure that resources are indeed available. The Chicago Tribune provides more details on the funding situation.

But with the admittedly optimistic hope that things might go according to plan, the passage of this law is an important moment. It takes some degree of responsibility for the rape kit backlog, and acknowledges it as a legitimate problem. It also sets a new minimum standard regarding response for other states dealing with the exact same issue. It’s sad that this is the first law of its kind, when it requires nothing more than basic responsibility to crime victims. But it’s positive that type of law that was well overdue for its first finally has one.

Of course, there are good reasons to ensure that rape kits don’t come to be seen as the be all and end all of sexual violence investigations. Rape kits are primarily useful in cases where the perpetrator is unknown, or a particular suspect denies any sexual contact with the accuser. In cases where a victim knows hir rapist and the accused claims that all sexual contact was consensual — a majority of cases — the rape kit doesn’t do a whole lot. Unless there are major physical injuries, which there usually aren’t, a rape kit can’t really tell anyone whether the contact was consensual or non-consensual.

But I say that anyone who subjects themselves to what is usually the indignity and invasion of a rape kit examination damn well deserves to have hir law enforcement agency take that effort and sacrifice seriously. Sexual assault victims don’t go for rape kit examinations because they think it will be fun — they usually go because they want justice, and want and expect to be taken seriously by investigators. They go because they rightly think that the violation of their bodies matter. And everyone else needs to start acting like those violations matter, too.

Further, while rape kits are frequently not integral to the rape case for which they were taken — again, where the accused admits sexual contact — with only about 20% of rape kits being tested, it seems that we sure as hell can’t trust police to pick and choose which kits are processed. Additionally, such kits can help to link known suspects to other crimes where a suspect’s DNA is unidentified. The failure to test rape kits is one way that a lot of serial rapists go undetected for years. And while the number of such cases may be low compared to the overall number of rape kits that are tested, I’d say that in a climate where rape accusers are so rarely taken seriously by police, overkill is both a nice change of pace and a potential show of good faith to do right by sexual assault survivors in the future.

If the law is implemented properly, I think Illinois will see an increase in identifying unknown perpetrators, and linking perpetrators whose identities are known to other sex crimes where there was no DNA match. And that is a good thing, an important thing, even though it’s not the only thing.

Rape myths will persist. Rape apologism will continue largely unchecked. Undoubtedly, police will still fail to follow up on cases even when all rape kits are tested. And even serial rapists will walk free. But if the law is actually enforced, victims won’t be traumatized by what they frequently refer to as “the second rape,” only to find out that they went through the process just to have their kit sit untested on a dusty shelf years later. That alone, in my view, may not be enough, but is well worth the passage of this law and every single dollar spent to put it into effect.

By now, most of you have probably heard of SB 1070 — the abhorrent Arizona immigration law that is soon to take effect. For those who haven’t heard of the law or who need a refresher, SB 1070 not only has the effect of legalizing racial profiling, it requires it of police. Once in effect, police will be required to demand proof that those they have stopped for other reasons are in the country legally, whenever “reasonable suspicion” of undocumented status is aroused. If one cannot prove that they are in the country legally, police also have the authority under SB 1070 to arrest hir for “trespassing” — i.e. being in the country.

As few white folks are likely to arouse such “reasonable suspicion” in a border state where the law was designed to deal with the influx of undocumented immigrants from Mexico, it has rightly inspired great outrage and fear in much of the Latina/o community. I’m of the opinion that anti-immigrant laws are virtually always racist, but SB 1070 is particularly and astonishingly blatant in its intentions, even if many of its supporters refuse to acknowledge as much. While not technically going into effect until July 29, it has already had a chilling effect on many communities and activists.

Today, the Justice Department sued Arizona over the law. To that I say “thank god,” and while I’m disappointed (but not surprised) that the basis for the suit has nothing to do with human rights and racial profiling, I wish them all the best of luck, and sincerely and desperately hope that they manage to prevent enforcement from beginning.

But the Justice Department’s suit isn’t the only one challenging the law, and it’s not the one that I want to write about today. Last week, the Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which represents 35 shelters and other organizations, joined a multifaceted lawsuit from the ACLU. The lawsuit includes documents from over 80 other groups across the country.

The brief, filed by Los Angeles law firm Manatt, Phelps and Phillips, claims SB 1070 “will cause immigrants to refrain from seeking federally established protections” and also “undermines the ability of domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, and other victim-services providers to bring crime victims to court, to meetings with prosecutors, and to the hospital for treatments of critical injuries.”

The latter claim is based on the section of SB 1070 that makes it illegal to knowingly harbor illegal immigrants.

Supporters of the law argue that SB 1070 allows law enforcement broad discretion to protect crime victims who may be illegal immigrants.

As state Sen. John Huppenthal, R-Chandler, wrote in The Arizona Republic, “No questioning is required when it would ‘hinder or obstruct an investigation.’ Crime victims and witnesses would never be questioned because questioning is limited only to those who have violated some law.”

Under federal law, domestic-violence victims who are illegal immigrants may qualify for two types of visas, the “T visa” and the “U visa,” for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking.

According to the legal brief in support of the ACLU lawsuit, “Under SB 1070 an immigrant crime victim will have no incentive to, and in fact will be afraid to, reach out to law enforcement for federally guaranteed crime victim social services in Arizona, for fear of detention, separation from her children, and removal.”

The problem with state Sen. Huppenthal’s claim that “Crime victims and witnesses would never be questioned” under SB 1070 is that people like him who support the law, and indeed the language of the law itself, makes absolutely no distinction between “criminals” and “victims” when it pertains to undocumented immigrants. According to nativist anti-immigrant folks, all undocumented immigrants are criminals — criminals who should be immediately jailed and deported — simply by being in the country. By being on our super special, stolen U.S. soil, a criminal is all that one can be, no matter what hir extraordinary virtues.

The column quoted above — already clear in its bias with its insistence on using the term “illegal immigrant,” though this is true of virtually all mainstream media — goes on to perfectly display this attitude, that there is no difference between victim and criminal, and that victims should always be considered both.

Still, I asked her how she would respond to supporters of SB 1070 who might say, “If these women didn’t come here illegally in the first place, they wouldn’t be so vulnerable to abuse.”

“I would say that a very small percentage of these women and children cross the border willingly,” Leiby said. “They were trafficked here and brought by their husbands or significant others. The abuse was started there and was brought here, and in this state the abuser has even more power over them.”

Thank god, E.J. Montini, that you were there to ask that question. If not for you, who else would blame victims for their own abuse and insinuate just how much they had it coming? This, my good readers, is what we call muckraking at its finest.

As for Leiby’s answer? Well, let me say first of all that I’m sure she’s doing the best she can with racists to convince and a victim-hating columnist to respond to. But while I have no doubt whatsoever that some women are indeed brought into the U.S. by their husbands against their will — and of course, many others are brought in by career traffickers — I am, I will say, skeptical of the claim that only “a very small percentage” of women undocumented immigrants entered the country willingly. I think a claim like that needs a whole lot of backing up, and here that evidence is not provided. Further, women need to feed themselves and their families just like men do. And I find it rather unlikely that crossing the border is a decidedly male way to do it.

But I think that even if Leiby’s claim was true, her answer concedes far too much — namely, the idea that women who cross the border without documentation only have themselves to blame for domestic abuse. It concedes that women who enter the U.S. illegally do have it coming. That they don’t deserve services. And that if SB 1070 does harm them, that’s just too bad, and they should have thought about that before setting their feet on our land.

To suggest that women make themselves vulnerable to domestic abuse, rather than abusers and the society that props up abusers with bullshit like this, is misogynistic. To suggest that only certain women, those non-white, non-U.S. women who enter the country without some special, really expensive papers, make themselves vulnerable to abuse is racist. To say “It’s not my business or responsibility what happens to them, because they crossed a line I drew in the sand after taking it from the people originally standing on it” is additionally xenophobic and colonialist. The whole thing is just the most repulsive, sickening display of outright hatred and dehumanization that I’ve seen in a while.

And so to Montini’s question, I say not that most victims didn’t enter the U.S. of their own free will and are therefore innocent, but that even if every single one of them happily skipped across the border while thumbing their noses at the Constitution and wearing a burning U.S. flag on their backs, they don’t deserve violence, not any violence, and that includes in their own homes. Suggesting that how they entered the country — it should go without saying, none of them as dramatically imagined above — determines whether or not they deserve to be beaten, whether or not they deserve to have access to safety, and whether or not their abusers should be held responsible for their violence, is cruel. It is ugly. It is inhumane, it is racist, it is misogynistic, it is victim-blaming, and it is the reason why so many women continue to live in terror. That “suggestions” like that one are made is the perfect example of why the Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence’s worries that victims will not feel safe coming forward under SB 1070 are entirely well-founded.

I love having good news instead of bad news to pass along, and it’s not incredibly often that I get it. Connecticut has recently passed a large package of anti-domestic violence laws. One of the portions of the package going into effect today is an increase in funding for domestic violence shelters — specifically, almost $3 million in funding from the state and federal government combined for domestic violence shelters that will allow them to stay open 24/7, rather than being closed at night.

Reportedly, Connecticut is among only five states — the others being Wyoming, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Maine — that do not currently provide 24/7 coverage through domestic violence shelters. Without that coverage, intimate partner violence victims, usually women and children, are left without a safety net during certain hours. The fact is, when a victim decides that it’s time to leave, that’s when it’s time to leave. If she makes an immediate decision at night to leave right that moment, she can’t be expected to go back home when she gets to the shelter and finds it closed. But some undoubtedly will be forced to do just that. If a victim decides that night is simply the safest time to leave, she needs resources available to her at that time. Otherwise, she may leave at a more dangerous time, or find herself  put at other risks. One victim who testified in favor of the bill, and who for her protection goes only by the name Sonia, told one such story about sleeping in her car overnight while waiting for a shelter to open.

But it’s not just the inadequate response to intimate partner violence that the Connecticut legislature has decided to address — they’re also looking into primary prevention. This law requires schools to provide information to instructors and counselors on domestic violence and teen dating violence as a part of training. As abusive behavior is learned and tends to start young — and as dating violence is on the rise, at least in some places — this is really important, and it’s good to see prevention being addressed for a change.

It’s also especially pleasantly surprising to see these issues being addressed right now, during a time where governments are struggling to balance their budgets (emphasis mine):

Rep. Mike Lawlor (East Haven) said in the past 30 years—since the brutal attempted murder of Tracy Thurman by her husband, Buck, in Torrington, put the issue front and center in Connecticut and led to the first major changes in how domestic violence cases are treated—he’s seen small changes in the way the state deals with domestic violence. He said this year’s laws mark major progress.

“This required some heavy lifting,” he told reporters facing him across the small conference room. “Imagine in this budget crisis trying to find money to dedicate to staffing shelters for victims of domestic violence around the clock. But that was done. All of this came from the front line professionals— the prosecutors, the police officers, the victim advocates, the probation and parole officers—telling us what was missing.”

A lot of places, such as California and New York City, are responding to budget crises by cutting or considering cutting funding for domestic violence and sexual violence prevention and response. These services are being generally treated as non-vital and disposable, and shelters and programs are closing down as we speak. The reason they’re being considered optional, I believe, is because they largely address violence against women in a patriarchal culture, and because we’re still struggling to get sexual violence and domestic violence perceived as “real” violence and “real” crimes worthy of public attention. When push comes to shove, it seems, women’s safety usually just doesn’t count.

To see Connecticut not only recognize the problems as serious, but also maintain that conviction to do something about them through financial problems, is reassuring and should be inspiring to other states. Good job on the legislators who championed the bills and voted for them, and a huge congratulations to the survivors and advocates for survivors who have undoubtedly worked very hard to promote them and get them passed.